Author: Bill

A Toast to the Town – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty-Two

Today I was to write a poem about something I’ve done, presumably as a child or adolescent, that gives me a kind of satisfaction. I think it is supposed to be something for which I am grateful. I had to dig for this one.

Grateful for the Grog

It wasn’t cocaine but some think it’s the same
when the forbidden froth of the fifties,
long before there were Swifties,
beer became the name of the game.

First taste was a sip, likely bogarted from
mother or father, or perhaps from my drunk-ass brother,
to wash down that salty Wise potato chip?
Hometown suds, favored by local buds
and still tastes like bad-beer today.

It was gunna happen anyway.
I learned to like it and how it made me feel.
I would have tasted beer someday,
then acquisition became part of the deal.

Tom T Hall’s song set somewhere aside,
beer became my pleasure and my problem.
I’m shocked that to some
the pleasure is none
and beer is forever denied.

“I like beer, it makes me a jolly good fellow
I like beer, it helps me unwind and sometimes it makes me feel mellow
(makes him feel mellow) … (He likes beer)”

So let me explain
in this little refrain

how grateful I am
to the woman or the man who drew me my first mug
from a spout, a bottle, or a sealed tin can I can chug.

Look both ways for the imperfect pleasures of life.
Mind the gaps and watch the taps, as the kegger is still a rite of passage.

Do It Anyway – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty-One

“Happy Monday,” she said. Today, I was supposed to attempt writing a poem in which something that normally unfolds in a set, well-understood, and organized way goes haywire; yet it is described as if it’s all very normal. Define normal?

Non-Compos Mentis*

Open mic Friday night on sixth street, Austin
and the crowd filed in silence.
First up, Gerty Stein wined if she told him
and Pablo painted her time off stage
when BEVO horns in and sings hooray for our side,
just then, Mathew Mac danced to silence
while imitating elon’s ox and Napoleon sang in locomotion.

The crowd cheered with silent finger snaps and the naked king
unzipped his pants
and played his instrument in tune
with united methodist horses chanting bite songs.

Two chickens fried the mic and mooned bleakly,
while the sober addicts ordered salad,
and the dead-beat dads cheered a silent sum.

The police up next went wet with white while swearing they were not watching her over there, and the crowd did the dead bug dong-dance on their backs.

Intermission brought AFD to wet down the APD who forgot their lines in unpaid fines.

And the crowd silently cheered in oxymoronic fight songs.

It rained in the house and the mic said nothing, time after time, and Bukowski’s ghost got booed and everybody left pitifully happy to never have loved at all.

Look both ways because mentality is a subjective call at poetry slams.
Mind the gaps, stutters, and forgotten lines because, funny or not,
silly is just a warm moist feeling.

*The title means “not of sound mind.”

Midnight Rider – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty

My Easter egg fortune was to write a poem “informed by musical phrasing or melody.” I was to employ sound play (i.e., rhyme, meter, assonance, alliteration).

I wrote a parody with new lyrics (my poem) assigned to the Alman Brothers song “Midnight Rider.” I used different words and a silly topic that fit the original song’s rhythm and phrasing, as suggested with the prompt.

Late-night Walker

Shit, I gotta go, run to keep from peein’
And I’m told to keep them from seein’
Yeah, I’ve got to trot out one more
Yet I ain’t gunna let ya see me, no
Not gunna let ya see the midnight walker

And I don’t know where the hell I’m goin’
And the flow goes on forever
And I’ll run around one more time to go
Yet I ain’t gunna let ya see me, no
Not gunna let ya see the midnight walker

And I’ll not wet the pants I’m wearing
This old fart will not be sharing
Yeah, I’ve got to trot out one more night

Yet I ain’t gunna let ya see me, no
Not gunna let them catch the midnight walker

Yet I ain’t gunna let ya see me, no
Not gunna let them catch the midnight walker

Yet you ain’t gunna see me go, oh, no
Not gunna let them catch the midnight walker

Look both ways when the humor just won’t let go.
Mind the gaps that push the prompt. Make Weird Al proud.

Lay Down, Lady – NaPo 2025 Day Nineteen

Today I was to write a poem that tells a story in the style of a blues song or ballad.

Green Eyed Blues

Loved you as they taught me to do.
Loved it all, as they taught me to do.
Duty, honor, country; I was there — to die for you.

Then, on that day came the blues, as it all withered and died.
One day what I loved just rolled over and dammed-well died.
Shit! Face down in my pillow I lay there and I cried.

I was the fool whose faith and flag I saw with pride.
I was the fool whose heart broke with a deathblow to pride.
No, I am no longer in love with you, such loss I cannot abide.

Good morning, America, how are you?
I’m true to the blue, mornin’ Murica, how are you?
Ima eating my shit sandwich with a hateful red-piss stew.

I’ve lost my world to white-hot green-eyed blues.
Nothing to die or to live for, I got me some green-eyed blues.
Sing me a song of freedom; I can’t eat, sleep, or find love in the news.

Look both ways to face the hopeless world we live in.
Mind the gaps but face the reality of nightmares on the day democracy died.

 

Austin-Healey Ride – NaPo 2025 Day Eighteen

Today my task was to craft a poem that recounts my experience of driving, and/or riding, and singing. I was to incorporate “a song lyric” into said poem. Just one?

Hit the Road, Jack!

No time for musical analysis
or explanations
for the songs that set my soul on fire.
Didn’t need to know writer inspirations,
didn’t care a dot about lyrical attire,
this meaning or that hard chord.
In desperation on the way there,
melding with music and singing my feelings
for going I didn’t care where. Just riding.

We didn’t start the fire
within the illusion
of what freedom was then.
I’ve been everywhere, man,
sung fast and furious.
Riding like the wind in my hair, I was there.
I was then.
We refused to take it easy.
Look, here comes the sun; on the road, again.
We were runnin’ on empty but full of life.
I was there with the wind in my hair,
without a care. Without one care.

We sang without a cappella—
blasting radio’s tune-after-tune,
not wanting to arrive
any too soon.
We belted songs, unrecorded;
out loud, on the road,
again and again, never stopping,
never knowing when.
Now those tunes
bring memories back,
songs and lyrics
to fire up familiar feelings of our reckless youth.

Look both ways to see back in the days when road trips meant music and friends.
Mind the gaps because we still do it, alone now, with the music turned way up.

 

Dream On – NaPo 2025 Day Seventeen

Today I was challenged to write a poem themed around friendship, with imagery or other ideas taken from two paintings (my choice from many). One by Leonora Carrington, and another by Remedios Varo, two surrealistic artists and friends. A surrealistically inspired, friendly poem?

The irony of this day is this prompt juxtaposed with the definition of surrealism: “the principles, ideals, or practice of producing fantastic or incongruous imagery or effects in art, literature (poetry), film, or theater by means of unnatural or irrational juxtapositions and combinations.” (Webster, on line) Where does one draw the line?

“One good friendship will outlive forty average loves.”

Faces

On purpose.
Told no one. Told everyone and nobody.
Formless as seen on tv ritual
ceremoniously entwined
with green crabapple branches.
Cuts. Touch. Mix blood brothers.
That smell. You! What? Stink-love.

Feel that? Smell. Yell. Scream.
Lie. Beatings from bullies.
Shinny-up. Run. Escape. Drown. Cross.
Crimeless criminality.

Friends first. Not. But.
Family was a lie.
Roy Rogers was naked.
All naked. Sing. Pray. Sting like a bee.

Share hair. Cardboard shoe soles
over shew holes and altar boys.
Smoke sticks. Tangents. Guilt.

Together every day. Share loot.
Flat nose. Black eye. Blood everywhere.
Swing. Fall. Break things.
Climb. Cry. Evil father.
Saintly mother. Naked sister.

Uncle Joe. G. I. what da ya know?
Cold is not coal, or pea.
Melds wrapped in love and shame.
Masturbating demons defiled hosts.
Do it. Now dare to do-do, pee higher.
Lie to be loved. Play all day.

Ugly beauty deep forever.
Melting madness of happiness.
Wanting what color of love?
Damn.
Help.
Hurry.
Hide.
It’ll never die.

Then it died.
Then you died.
Then I cried.

Back.
Then.
When.
Me.
We.

Look both ways or every way at the same time
because art is in what part of a dream when nothing is real and there is no god?
Imagine. Mind the gaps and slaps in genital naps.
If it makes sense, it cannot be art.

Music Cities – NaPo 2025 Day Sixteen

For today, I was to write a poem that imposes a particular song on a place along the lines of a soundtrack laid on top of the location. The poem should describe the interaction between the place (Las Angeles) and the music (“Hotel California” by the Eagles) using references to a plant (avocado tree). I also should incorporate a quotation. Extra credit if I used some every day, overheard language.

72 Suburbs in Search of a City

Hotels it’s got, but New York, it’s not.
Any time of the year, right here
on the way to El Aye with
arpeggio wind twisting your hair with
music meaning heaven or hell.

We hear harmonizing guitars
introducing savored troubadour’s forbiddingness
when she lit a candle and showed us the way,
because nobody was from the beaches in Cee Aee
where voices wake you up in the middle of the night.

Where innocence ends with Tinseltown experience
and songs sung in sad cafés,
they play
the finest guitar semi-solos ever made
and we mirror allegories
of high life’s metaphysical characters,
but you must be there or bring your own alibis.

South of the Sierra Madre, along the coastal
micro climes they fly like Hass Autano, Reed Pinkerton,
Gwen Fuerte, and Lamb Bacon sing and play after Linda.
Fine for nut wrapped avocado testicles,
we cut the skin and suck the flesh before it rots.

Will we ever leave and not go back again?
To face the music and the steely knives killing the beast.
We are all just prisoners in our own tree of device
where we can jump out any time we like,
but we can never leave without a guitar coda.

Look both ways at night on dark desert highways.
Mind the gaps when the fake is real,
and the music makes the passage to the place you were before.

Git ‘er Done – NaPo 2025 Day Fifteen

My halftime (mid-month) NaPo challenge was to write a six-line poem that is informed by repetition, has simple language, and expresses enthusiasm like “The Shirt,” a poem by Jane Kenyon and the introduction of the band MC5 by Jesse Crawford. I never…

Stand Up and Holler

I tell you what. Let’s do it!
I can’t tell you
cuz awkward embarrassment
about what’s what
her, us, and back then, when
I’m telling you, it was against the law.

Look both ways when crossing aisles in the big box stores.
Miles of Aisles and Joni.
Mind the gaps between the stacks when you try to explain, but you dunna wanna.

Interwoven – NaPo 2025 Day Fourteen

My second Monday poem was to describe a place in terms of its flora, fauna, and other natural (and semi-natural in this case) phenomena. I was to sink into the sound of the location using poetic conversational tone. I was also invited to include near or slant rhymes in the poem. Confession: I enjoyed writing this.

There are Drums

Two bits and a dime east of the Sound water
that holds the Emerald Rain City at bay,
up towards twin peaks country,
three nickels past the Snoqualmie sign,
playing in the Issaquah Alps,
at the western shades of the Cascades,
rain drums play taps, slaps, and raps all day long.

Before the rains play their beats upon
the Douglas fir and bigleaf maple,
when western hemlock and coral root catch
drops before simple ferns silently call
some sagebrush, deer, elk, coyotes,
and wildcats toward the music,
Rattlesnake Ridge plays a glacier crescendo.

The verdant green on green on green screams its song,
as the drums beat the trails along,
and we love the sound as the lower down
trailhead city
plays us a ditty
in a rain drum courtyard,
haunting and inviting
us in time to make the climb
to the height
up nature carved rock to an overlook, above the lake.

It’s almost too much as a pleasing sound
brings us to a threshold of happy sensory overload.
Smiling at the ironic name since there are no rattlesnakes,
we do more than hear the music and see the rain.
We feel the wet, the wind, and cool breeze;
we smell the fresh everything, even dirt,
in the air we taste the kiss of nature.
We vow to return to the music
and to save the wonders for our children.

Look all the ways with awakened senses
of more than five as you find a love of nature that is new to you.
Mind the gaps especially if you venture to the top and do the overlook, too.

This place:

I’m About to Snap – NaPo 2025 Day Thirteen

The prompt challenged me to write a poem using the form and structure demonstrated in Donald Justice’s poem, “There is a gold light in certain old paintings.”

A Star was Born

You smiled when I took your picture yesterday.
I took more of you when you were not looking.
I was pleased when I saw that you were happy.
In one five hundredth of a second, we were looking,
In less than a heartbeat, we had a relationship.
Traditions old; artist, model, relationship.

Then we moved on to live our separate lives.
Well, you did. I took our moment home with me.
Camera to computer your megabytes will stay.
Art’s process to product, about you by me.
We share a vignette of recorded portraiture.
An artful rendering — your beauty in portraiture.

In your life and in mine, nothing much has changed.
Yet there it was. I turned, aimed. You smiled, I pressed.
I took more pictures of happy, smiling faces.
But from this I was happy to write a poem.
Moments of time, frozen forever as subjects.
When the photographer finds some willing subjects.

Look both ways while roaming with camera in hand, ready to shoot,
to find the exact, perfect second. It eludes many.
Mind the gaps because when you snooze, the moment is gone — forever.